MAMEWorld Forums - EmuChat - Re: Bluetooth and USB joysticks coexisting?

> Hey folks, I've got an issue with Windows and the way it indexes joysticks, and I'm
> hoping you folks will have solution suggestions. What this boils down to is that I've
> got my fancy controller-only media box, and it's primarily controlled via bluetooth
> Dualshock 3, with the PS button being the trigger to quit most of the emulators on
> the system, including MAME. I'm trying to get it working with other Dualshock _2_
> controllers, many of which I already have, via cheap USB PSX adapters. The issue
> seems to be that when a USB controller gets plugged in, it immediately gets joystick
> index priority over the DS3. *EVEN WITH* JoyToKey 5 forcing the DS3 to be Joystick 1,
> whenever I load up MAME, JoyToKey is ignored entirely, and my Dualshock 3 is suddenly
> Pad 3 rather than Pad 1, and since the "kill MAME" command is bound to the PS button
> which DS2s don't have, I'm suddenly stuck. It happens if I plug a 360 controller in
> too - DirectX or whatever handles gamepads in Windows assigns the wired pad as
> Joystick 1 despite the bluetooth DS3 having previously occupied that index. What I'm
> looking to do is force the DS3 to stay as Joystick 1, regardless of whatever other
> gamepads I may plug in.
>
> Does anyone have any tips to this effect?

That's just Windows being Windows unfortunately. Basically you'll probably have to pissfart around inserting and removing controllers in a specific order until Windows has them hooked up the 'right' way. Hopefully Windows doesn't hard code each controller to always stay as 1, 2, 3 when plugged in...

JoyToKey doesn't work in MAME as it uses a more basic type of input interface which MAME doesn't make use of (e.g. using a gamepad via JoyToKey will work in a handful of Windows games, as well as Notepad, Word etc, but MAME won't even know it's there as it isn't using the same interface MAME uses to read keyboard/virtual keyboard inputs).